As she pours herself a coffee, she says, “Not at all averse to bras.” Her lips tip up. “But I don’t normally sleep in them. Just grabbing coffee.”
She leans against the countertop, all smug with herself.
“Do you normally walk around like that when Luke is here?”
Her hands wrap around the mug, and she takes a tentative sip, eyeing me over the rim as she does. “No. I normally wait until I hear you leave. Then I get up and make my cup of coffee.”
I grunt, feeling like a dick for policing how she walks around. Luke wouldn’t even notice. I’m the fucker with his head in the gutter who can’t handle it.
“Then I go back to my room and put my panties on,” she huffs out quietly, peering up playfully from behind her mug.
“Wait. Did you just say that you wait for me to leave and then make coffee?”
Her brow arches. “Smarter than you look, Eaton.”
“But I’m up at 4:30.”
She shrugs. “Yeah. It’s kind of nice. I sit on the front deck and read my dirty books. It’s peaceful. I like the morning, and since I’m not out until three a.m. working, I can actually enjoy them. I hate sleeping in. I always feel like I’ve wasted my day.”
“Why do you wait for me to leave?”
She gives me a face that says she thinks I’m an idiot. “Because if you’re this grumpy midmorning, I’d hate to see you first thing. Those cowboys down at the ranch must be terrified of you.”
I grunt. They are. And that’s just how I like it.
“Do my nipples bother you, Cade?”
Coffee sprays from my mouth.
I get most of it back in my mug, but not all. My hand is soaked, and I can feel the droplets of it in my beard.
Willa blinks at me innocently, and my heartbeat thunders in my ears.
Fake innocence. She knew what she was doing when she asked that question.
“No.” I wipe at my face, turning to put my coffee back down on the countertop. I need to pick my next words carefully so I don’t come off like a condescending asshole.
I know I often come across that way, and I don’t want to with Willa. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, wanting someone to like me. “It’s just that—”
“It’s funny. I thought about you telling me panty lines aren’t something we should worry about people seeing, and I’m feeling the same way about my nipples.”
I blink at her.
Hell. No.
“We all have nipples, right?”
I swallow, at a loss for how to reason my way out of this. She’s trapped me in a box of my own logic.
“For example . . .” Her bright green feline eyes drop to my chest. “I can see yours right now.”
My chin snaps toward my chest, and sure enough, my nipples are giving me away.
“And they don’t bother me at all.” She licks her bottom lip slowly, with intention, before one cheek hitches up in a lopsided smirk.
Then she turns and walks back toward her bedroom, holds one fist up above her head, and says, “Fuck the patriarchy.”
And I’m left standing there. Watching her. Wondering if she’s wearing any panties under those soft, loose shorts I could so easily pull to the side.
“You can’t put your fingers there, pal. Or you’re going to cut them clean off.”
“I know what I’m doing, Dad.” Luke rolls his eyes and continues to chop a cucumber in the stupidest way imaginable.
I grab the knife and lift it up. “Listen. You’re going to hold this properly or risk giving me a heart attack. I want you to know how to do this properly. You said you’d listen to my instructions.”
The trade-off was that I have to listen to his terrible pop music on the speaker. The stuff that all his little friends have indoctrinated him with in only one year of school.
It’s Sunday night, and I’m making a full-blown gourmet meal. Luke is helping me cook because I refuse to raise a man who doesn’t know how to hold his own in a kitchen. Feeding the people I care about is how I tell them I care without having to say it out loud.
Because saying it out loud makes it a little too real for me.
“Fine,” he huffs out, dramatically shrugging his shoulders.
“Your dad’s right.” Willa appears out of thin air, reaching in and swiping a coin of cucumber and popping it into her mouth. “If you cut like that, all you’ll be left with is a thumb, and how will I teach you to play guitar?”
“Willa!” Luke turns on the chair he’s standing on and launches himself into her arms. “We missed you!”